Former Home of Frances Perkins

Frances Perkins was born in Boston in 1880. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College and moved to Chicago where she volunteered in settlement houses and worked as a teacher. Within a few years, however, she moved to Manhattan to attend graduate school at Columbia University. She was nearly thirty, but the time that she spent immersed in the heady intellectual climate of Greenwich Village was formative.

In 1911, while living in the Village, Perkins witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, which occurred just around the corner from Washington Square Park. One of the worst workplace disasters in the city’s history, the fire resulted in the deaths of 146 young women, many of whom jumped to their deaths from the eighth and ninths floors of the building. Perkins, who was in the park at the time of the fire, recalled the impact of seeing the jumping women and would later say that “the New Deal was born that day.”

Perkins was already politically active and worked for the Consumer’s League when she witnessed the Triangle fire, but that experience led her to develop even more connections in city politics and to work for legislation that would make factories safer for workers. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt recommended her for the position of Executive Secretary for the Committee on Safety for the city.

The following year, Perkins married Paul Wilson and moved out of the Waverly Place apartment and moved to Washington Place. The marriage suffered under the weight of Wilson’s mental illness and the increasing demands of his care, and within a few years, the family moved to a smaller apartment as Wilson’s care became increasingly expensive.

Perkins is, of course, most well-known for serving as Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt. She was the first woman to be named to a presidential cabinet and was one of only two people to serve under Roosevelt for the duration of his presidency. Her early experiences as a settlement house volunteer as well as her time in Greenwich Village continued to influence her work as Labor Secretary. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Social Security Act, and other significant pieces of New Deal legislation. 

Winchell, Louisa . Frances Perkins: From Greenwich House to the White House , Village Preservation. November 20th 2019. Accessed February 4th 2021. https://www.villagepreservation.org/2019/11/20/frances-perkins-from-greenwich-village-to-the-white-house/.

Frances Perkins House , National Park Service . Accessed February 4th 2021. https://www.nps.gov/places/frances-perkins-house.htm.